The Empire of Eggs
by ToothyBeastie
Summary: The Empire of Beauty seems to be a perfectly ordinary beauty salon- the largest and poshest in Britain, of course, but perfectly ordinary otherwise. For hairdresser Carmine Harper, however, the Empire of Beauty is about to get a little extra-ordinary...
1. Going Mental

"Muuuuuuum!" yelled Carmine Harper, shouldering her bag and propping open the door with the toe of her shoe. Cold air rushed in, washing the lingering scent of incense out of the house and making the crystals hanging from the ceiling clink together. "I'm going to work!"

"Oh, let me kiss you!" said Carmine's mum, breezing down the stairs, her pashmina wrap floating in the air behind her. She stood on her tip-toes to kiss Carmine's cheeks. "You have all your papers?"

"Yes, mum," said Carmine.

"You have your mobile?" asked Carmine's mum.

"Yes, mum," said Carmine, inching towards the door.

"You're sure your sister is coming by to pick you up?" asked Carmine's mum.

"Certain, mum. You don't have to worry," said Carmine, giving her mother a fleet one-armed hug. "Everything is going to go perfectly. I'll just remember not to burn anyone's heads with the curling iron..."

"I just wish you could work somewhere better, Carmine..."

Carmine groaned mentally. Just what she needed, a sermon.

"If only you could meet a, a doctor or something, like Leah," said Carmine's mum. "I just wish you could be happy."

Carmine knew her mother was just trying to look out for her, but it was a bit annoying to always be compared to her older sister, Leah, soon to be a Mrs.

Carmine's mother finally released her and Carmine left the house. Taking a deep breath of the unseasonably warm, fresh spring air...not too fresh when a car rolled by. Carmine coughed and squinted through the morning sunlight, then set out walking.

The streets of London were already jam-packed, the foot-traffic as thick as anything. Carmine felt herself be jostled around by the passers-by. Maybe they could, you know, sniff out that she was nervous. _Like hyenas,_ she thought.

Carmine stopped at a crosswalk, cars screeching to a halt inches from her toes, and took the opportunity to look around and assert herself a little.

Everyone was still a little wiggy about the past Christmas. Carmine could tell that from whenever she went out. Everyone was more subdued, more fearful of the sky. Understandable, really. Those hours when everyone had lost their memory, and to come to only to find that firey planet looming in the sky? Her mum and her ring of close friends had decided that it was a portent of the apocalypse - 2012 and all that. Carmine didn't really take stock in all that woo-woo nonsense, but so many strange things had happened over the past few years. She still hadn't forgotten her mother and sister, perched on the rooftops back in 2006.

Carmine gave an involuntary shiver despite the heat and crossed the road, jostled by everyone else as they dashed to work. Carmine took her mobile from her jacket pocket and checked the time. She was plenty early. Too early, almost. Would that look bad?

Carmine was so deep in thought she suddenly bumped into something in her path. Her head went CLUNK on a hard surface and she reeled backwards stupidly, trying to see what she had walked into.

She stopped and stared.

She had run into a large blue phone box- one she actually recognized from her college history textbooks. It was a police box. In the fifties, they had been like miniature jail cells. If you saw a crime you could phone for the police and they could lob the miscreant in a box like this until a car came to haul them off.

They weren't around anymore really, except for museums and the like. This one was just perched here on a street corner, next to a bicycle rack and a planter.

Carmine frowned. Something about the box felt strange. A small chill ran down her back as she looked around it, trying to see if it was part of an exhibit, but it was just the box, sitting on the sidewalk.

"Odd, isn't it?"

Carmine whirled around to find a small elderly fellow with a large canteen of coffee. He took a swig of it, then pointed with a grubby finger at the box. "Used to see these things alla time when I was younger, way back in the fifties."

"Yeah, a bit weird," agreed Carmine. "Wonder if it's part of something? Some sort of show? It's in good condition, too. Look, the paint's all new..."

She looked back round at the elderly fellow, to find that he was gone. Vanished into the crowd. She checked her clock again, bit her lip at the time, then hurried down the street with a last glance back at the box, still standing there silently like some blue monolith.

The Empire of Beauty. The single most important name in the beauty business. It was really a brand name- shampoos, scrubs, facials, manicure sets...the very best of the best carried that little silver-and-black sticker, the letters 'E.o.b.' inscribed on it, twisted and curlicued around each other like snakes. But the brands were only the beginning, for in the center of London, in the busiest, most modern section there was the headquarters of the Empire of Beauty.

Carmine was approaching the building now, staring at the enormous silver skyscraper that shot straight into the sky like a huge arrow. It was gargantuan, the size of an entire block with its own multi-tiered parking garage. It even had gardens. Behind huge tasteful iron fences Carmine could see the leafy tops of trees waving and hear the rush of water as it shot from fountains.

It was in this great temple to perfection that Carmine worked. It had seemed glamorous, and she'd worked with hair and stuff before- after she'd lost her job as a history teacher at her old school. She'd gotten the job, much to her happiness and her mother's dismay. The pay was superb, though, much better than a chip shop or wherever she'd have gone to work otherwise. She might even be able to get her own flat. She'd had a flat but she'd been kicked out when she didn't pay rent one month.

Carmine ascended the huge black stone steps to the gigantic front entrance. The glass doors were emblazoned with the silver-and-black logo of the Empire, glittering in the sun every time someone left or went in.

She stepped into the busy lobby, peering around at the huge spiraled staircase and shiny polished wooden floors, her surroundings all burnished metal and expensive woods and glass. The logo of the Empire was everywhere- projected onto glass sheets hanging on the wall, on all the huge modern front desks, even on the pots of the potted plants that grew in the corners.

She looked down at the floor to find herself standing on one of the twisting silver ribbons of the 'E' in 'E.o.B.', the logo huge and inlaid into the floor itself.

Finding her way into the staff-only section of the building, a place that was considerably less swanky than the lobby with its white walls and linoleum floors, Carmine stuffed her bag and her civilian coat in her locker and slammed it shut. After a deep, cleansing breath and Carmine's personal mantra of _you love your job, you love your job, you love your job,_ she left to her salon.

"Where's the stuff?" yelled Carmine as she pawed through the drawers of her station. She looked up, staring at the technician opposite, a nice girl called Marie. It was morning break, and Carmine was giving her inventory a once-over. She seemed to be out of Henna Herbal RejuveHair in Mahogany™- exactly the stuff she needed for the next customer's dye job. _Figures,_ she thought.

"What stuff?" asked Marie, pouring tea from her thermos into a mug.

"The henna stuff, in the wonky bottle," said Carmine. She banged the shiny black drawer of her station shut. "It's not _here_."

"Well, I don't have any of it," said Marie. "You'll have to go get some from the closet."

It wasn't in the closet.

"Just get some from the store-room!" said Marie, waving Carmine off in a vague direction.

Carmine made a scathing sound and left the salon, passing through the polished wooden double-doors emblazoned with the logo of the Empire, and trying to remember exactly where the store-room was. _Down a flight of stairs, maybe? Somewhere past the lobby? Aargh! I hate huge buildings. Bloody things are like bloody mazes._

She finally found the elevator doors leading to the storage section, far away from the general mayhem of the rest of the spa. She finally clicked 'basement' on the range of buttons in the stylishly decorated elevator, the entirety of which probably cost more than her mother's whole house.

The elevator gave a pleasant little 'ding' and deposited her in a dim, cold hallway, constructed of concrete and linoleum, cheap lights strung up on the ceiling. They gave a faint humming sound, but otherwise, the whole place was silent.

Carmine took a nervous step forward, peering down the hallway in either direction. She felt like this probably wasn't the right place at all.

She set off down the hallway anyways, trying the first door she came across. Locked. _Figures._ Peering into the little window in the door, she could see shelves of spa products. She could even see what she needed, just sitting there on the shelf, only a few feet away.

Carmine tugged on the door handle, but it remained locked. With a loud frustrated _AAaaAaargh_, she hurried down the corridor, her feet starting to ache in her ridiculously high heels, part of the ultrastylish uniform. She paused to tug them off and shove them in the pocket of her uniform.

When she came to a stairway leading down into the inky darkness of the region that housed the generator and the boiler, below even the basement, dubbed the 'Dungeon' by the employees at the Empire, she didn't hesitate and ventured down the slippery concrete steps.

Finally, padding along in her nylons, Carmine came to the end of the dungeon hallway and wearily tried the door there. It creaked open to her delight, and she slipped into the dark storeroom beyond.

Less of a storeroom, really, and just another passage. Carmine narrowed her eyes, trying to see through the darkness, and walked forwards blindly. Her hands suddenly brushed something slippery and crinkly, hanging from the ceiling, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see that a bunch of tarps were hanging from the ceiling, like in a construction zone.

Carmine frowned. _This is bizzare._ Henna Herbal RejuveHair in Mahogany™ forgotten, she tugged aside the tarps to try and see where this weird passageway went.

The space beyond the tarps was brighter than the rest of the passageway, the air tinted a luminescent green colour. Carmine looked around herself and noticed the architecture was different here, the walls much smoother and ribbed like the inside of a huge piece of tubing. The air was warmer too, thick and humid. Somewhere, muffled by the walls, Carmine could hear a steady _thump-thump-thump. _The sound of a generator, maybe?

Carmine suddenly stopped. She had come to the entrance to an enormous concrete room, large enough to fit her whole house in. Great lengths of tubing branched over the ceiling like the veins of some huge animal, running down the walls to plug into several gigantic tanks. They looked the sort of thing one might put a basking shark in at an aquarium.

In these tanks, however, were no basking sharks. The water in the tanks glowed green, light like bioluminescence. Carmine had seen films about phosphorescent animals like glowworms in deep caves, and angler fish at the bottom of the sea, and this is what the light reminded her of.

She stepped further into the room, muggy heat washing over her. It was baking! Like a sauna. Carmine slowly walked up to the gigantic tanks, peering in, trying to see past the green glow.

Inside the tanks were globular forms, about the size of footballs, translucent-green and suspended in the green liquid. In the middle of each of the spheres was a small curled form, like a little worm. Like enormous grapes, they sat there, bobbing eerily in the tanks.

Attached to each of the spheres were hundreds of tiny tubes, which led up out of the tank and into a larger tube on the ceiling. Carmine inched closer, pressing her face to the glass. It was the liquid that was giving off the glow, and all the heat. And a _smell. _It was rotten and putrid, like a sandwich left too long in the wrapper that's started to grow mould.

_It must be some new product. Got to be, _thought Carmine. What other explanation was there for weird tanks of matter in the basement of a beauty salon? _I sure wouldn't want to use it. It's nasty-looking. Probably won't sell too well._

Despite this mundane conclusion, something about the stuff in the tank gave her a creepy feeling. She didn't know what it was about this place, but...

It was like she was being watched.

Carmine stepped away from the tank, nearly tripping over one of the tubes on the floor, and left the bizzare room, pushing hurriedly through the tarps in the corridor outside. It was high time she was getting back to her station anyways. Break must be almost over...and she hadn't even gotten the henna...herbal....mahogany...whatsit. She was _so _in trouble...

She pushed the door to the dungeon open hard.

_THUNK!!!_

Something thudded against the door and Carmine felt a resistance, then the door swung open and Carmine almost stepped on a man lying sprawled in the hallway. He had evidently been right outside the door as Carmine had pushed it open.

"Oh my GOD!" said Carmine, horrified. The man, tall and very skinny, had on a snappy pinstriped suit, trainers, and quite the most amazing sticky-up hair that Carmine had ever seen. Now, sitting on the floor, he was looking somewhat stunned. "Are you alright?"

"Been slightly better in the past, the recent past, mind you, because I was slightly not-better in the not-so recent past," he said, getting up slowly. He patted himself over for damage, then turned and stared at Carmine. "You're...a _girl!_"

"_Obviously_!" said Carmine, caught off guard. "And _you're _not supposed to be here!"

She frowned. "Who are you?"

"Oh, someone," said the man, fluttering his fingers vaguely. "Interesting place, this, isn't it? Sort of…sewer. Damp, mind. Could catch arthritis, spending so much time in damp places."

"What _are_ you doing down here?" Carmine asked, suddenly suspicious. He didn't _look_ like the sort that frequented salons, though you could never really tell from appearances.

"Could ask you the same question," said the man seriously. "What are we all doing here? In this time? In this universe? Funny, isn't it, how fate does drop us in the randomest of places?"

"No," said Carmine. "What are you _doing_ down here?"

"I'm maintenance," he said. "Doing maintenance. _Obviously!_"

"That's likely," Carmine scoffed. Her mind suddenly slid to the tank of stuff in the passage beyond, then this strange fellow being all stealthy and secretive -well, somewhat hyperactive. She wondered momentarily if he were on something- and put two and two together.

"Oh my GOD," she said, watching the man take out a small metal torch and shine it around. It made a strange humming sound, and cast rather less light than torches usually did. "You're from BeautyTech International, aren't you?"

She snapped her fingers. "You're sneaking in here to steal the formula for the new stuff."

"Ooh, stuff!" said the man, flicking off the torch and stuffing it back into his jacket pocket. "I do love stuff! Squishy stuff, nice stuff, stuffy stuff. All kinds of stuff. Mostly. What stuff?"

"You _know_ what stuff," Carmine said grimly. "You're a spy, you...spy, and I'm going to stop you!"

She ran to the nearest emergency phone booth in the wall, unhooking the phone from its jack. She brandished it like a sword, finger poised over the numberpad. "I am_ calling security_."

"Ok!" said the man brightly.

"I'm calling them RIGHT NOW," said Carmine, attempting to sound as authoritative as possible. "Look! Look! I'm dialing!"

She tried to force herself to press the red button that would alert security, but the man was had those enormous puppy-dog eyes that Carmine melted over, and he was _cute. _She hated to think that, for this sort of thing to be her determining factor, but...

Carmine felt herself blushing. "I am DIALING," she said.

The man ignored her. "Increased levels of regenerative cells in the atmosphere, paaaay-dirt!" he muttered, shining the torch around. "Must be close...Must be really close...." He gave a great _ha_, and sort of punched the air. "I am _good!_"

With that, he turned and dashed up the stairs and down the hallway towards the elevator. Carmine made another scathing sound, slammed the phone back onto its jack, and with a last look at the door leading to the tank, followed him.

"Wait!" she yelled. "Just...are you with BeautyTech? Oh, come now! I won't report you..."

She was cut short by a strange sound, a sort of rough grating, or a whooping, or a vworping, like some kind of strange machine that had gone a bit wrong. Carmine careened around the corner just in time to see something very strange indeed.

In the passageway opposite the elevator doors, fading away into thin air, was a police phone box. A blue one from the fifties, like the one she had seen on the sidewalk that morning.

A breeze ruffled her hair and she squinted as she watched the box just fade away into nothing. The strange sound echoed around the basement for a few seconds, then that too was gone.

A _Police phone box. _Fading into _thin air._

_I must be going mental,_ Carmine thought as she stepped forwards to stand in the place where the box had been. She reached out a trembling hand, as if expecting to touch something that wasn't there and had never been. Her fingers brushed the air of the basement, the cold raising goose-bumps on her bare arms.

She backed away, fumbling for the elevator buttons, and silently rode the thing back up into the world of the sane. She stepped out of the elevator, nearly running into a crowd of well-dressed spa-goers, and made her way back up to the salon where she worked.

Carmine caught a glimpse of the time on the big modern wall clock, and instantly all thoughts of strangely dressed spies and tanks of strange matter and disappearing phone boxes were erased from her mind. Break had been over for fifteen minutes and-_oh, God-_ a group of customers were standing impatiently around Carmine's station like a flock of very wealthy birds.

"Carmine!" yelled Marie, in the midst of curling someone's hair. "Where have you _been?_ Where's the Herbal Henna RejuveHair™?"

Her mascara-lined eyes widened. "And where are your _shoes?!"_

-Constructive criticism is widely encouraged-


	2. The Fountain of Youth

Carmine slammed the door to the house harder than was absolutely necessary, making the moon-and-star windchimes that hung in the doorframe tinkle loudly. She turned to say hello to her mother and reeled in the sudden cloud of the intense scent of incense that suddenly assaulted her nostrils.

"Mum!" she called, coughing and making her way into the living room, where she found her mother and about five other women, all clothed in rather incredible gauzy clothes and mounds of jewelry, holding hands in a circle and chanting. In the middle of the circle smoldered a carved tray with a stick of incense burning in it.

"_Mum,_" she said wearily, hands on her hips.

Mrs. Harper suddenly opened her eyes, blinking blearily as though coming out of a deep trance, and looked round at Carmine.

"Not now, dear! We're_ chanting_!" She gave a _tsk,_ as though any right-minded person would instantly see that.

Carmine sighed, then went into the kitchen to put on some water for tea. "What're you chanting about _now?"_ she said.

"Oh, so glad you asked, darling," said Mrs. Harper.

"We're chanting to the Great Fire-Planet for you to get a boyfriend," said one of the other women in the circle, a plump cheerful woman called Mrs. Partridge. "God knows you could do with one, dear."

Carmine stopped dead in her tracks, the jug of milk poised over the mugs of tea. "Thank you," she said delicately, "but I'll find one in my own time, if it's all the same."

"Your mum tells us how lonely you are," said Mrs. Finch, a spindly, rather withered old thing sitting across from Mrs. Partridge.

"There's plenty of handsome young men on this good Earth!" said Mrs. Harper. "You'll find yours one day."

"I'm sure," said Carmine. She sat down at the table wth her tea, staring out over London. The great glimmering tower of the Empire of Beauty thrust itself into the sky, taller than the other buildings, its many windows catching the last lights of the sun.

Her thoughts kept slowly straying, drifting away to dark basements and blue boxes. The heady smell of the incense wasn't helping . Carmine took up a stubby pencil laying their on the embroidered tablecloth and she started absentmindedly drawing on her mum's account notepad, great disturbing fleshy spheres and tanks of slime, and anglerfish and glowworms. She rendered it all in deft sketchiness, only looking down at her paper when she had run out.

She had drawn a large, faintly disturbing picture of the stuff from the tank. The strangeness of the day came crashing down suddenly on her, making her give an involuntary twitch that snapped the point off the pencil.

"Are you alright, dear?" asked her mother, suddenly hovering over her in a perfumed cloud. "What is that you're drawing now?"

"Um, I'm not sure," said Carmine, deciding she wanted to keep her memories to herself. After all, if they turned out to be mere figments of her deranged mind, she wouldn't exactly want anyone else to _know, _now, would she?

"Is your psyche in a state of flux?" asked Mrs. Harper, settling herself back down in her ring of friends and clasping hands with the two women sitting on either side of her. "I'm sensing flux around you...Have you come into contact with dark energy recently?"

Carmine gave her mother a _look._

"Well!" said Mrs. Harper. "You've disrupted our mantra, and there's nothing more that can be done with the Fire-Planet today."

All her friends gave various sounds of disappointment, and started clearing up the remains of the incense. Mrs. Harper settled down on the cushy velvet sofa and, taking the remote control, switched on the small ancient television that sat under her large statue of Shiva. The pleasantly bland voice of the newscaster filled the room.

"Oh, those poor Haitians," breathed Mrs. Partridge. "Did you send relief money? I know I will..."

"Look!" interrupted Mrs. Harper. "Carmine! It's something about your job! Come here, dear!"

Carmine ripped the drawing of the stuff from the tank off the pad and threw it into the bin before joining her mother on the sofa. "What is it?"

"You _must _bring me a free sample of this product, dear," said Mrs. Finch.

Carmine looked at the screen of the TV.

"...studies have shown that this new product from the endlessly popular Empire of Beauty brand actually de-ages skin," said the newscaster, standing in front of a large moving picture of the Empire of Beauty, holding a slender black-and-silver bottle, the logo of the Empire swirling across its shiny surface. "Not just with moisturizers or clever applications of colour. Is this product, dubbed the 'Fountain of Youth' by Mimi Avalon, founder of the Empire of Beauty, the next 'big thing'?"

Carmine leaned closer to the TV.

"Here, live in the studios, she is to answer the questions we have about the Fountain of Youth!" said the newscaster, the camera angle widening to accommodate Mimi Avalon herself, as impeccable as always, with her cascade of glamourously-styled black hair, her skin from straight off the surgeon's table, her clothes that probably cost Carmine's salary for a year. She sat down slinkily on the chair next to the newscaster and gave the camera a dazzling smile.

"Hello, Mimi!" said the newscaster. "Now, I'm sure the women of the nation are waiting with bated breath for the Fountain of Youth! Tell us- what's the secret?"

"Oh, I can't tell you _all _my secrets, BeautyTech International might just be watching," purred Mimi Avalon, adjusting her trademark cat's-eye sunglasses. "I can just tell you, ladies of the UK, that we've finally gotten it right. The labs of the Empire have finally, _finally _found the key, if not to eternal youth, to the most radiant skin you've ever had."

"That _is _intriguing!" said the newscaster. "How exactly does the Fountain work?"

"Like so," said Mini Avalon, taking the bottle and squeezing a little of the transparent paste inside onto her hand. "You just rub it onto your skin," she said, doing so on the back of her hand, "and the results are immediate."

She held up her hand, and even Carmine couldn't stifle a gasp. The patch of skin on the back of her hand was literally glowing with health, the surface of the skin pearly and flawless. After a moment the luminescence died away, leaving the skin there like porcelain.

"Wo-o-ow!" said the newscaster.

"It's really very simple," said Mimi Avalon, shaking the silky sleeve of her jacket back down. "The ...special ingredients...in the Fountain just reverse the decomposition of the cells in your skin, leaving it revitalized. It's like the formula for all our products, only increased by tenfold."

"Amazing!" cooed the newscaster. "Simply amazing. Thank you for coming in, Ms. Avalon."

"It's been a pleasure," said Mimi Avalon.

The program ended, segueing into some commercial about biscuits.

"She's just a genius, that woman," said Mrs. Grouse, another of Carmine's mother's chanting pals. "Been using that Empire shampoo for a week now, and just look at the difference in my hair!"

She swung her mane around for everyone else to see. "It's the glossiest it's been for years!"

Carmine stared hard at nothing in particular, her thoughts circling around and around in her head. They kept coming back to the stuff in the tank, to the spy in the pinstripes, to the Fountain of Youth and its incredible effects, and one thing burned in her mind.

_I have to go back down there tomorrow. _Back down to the basement. Back down to the tank. Carmine knew when she smelled a rat, and this was more like a capybara.

_Just a little bit of investigating..._


	3. Wheel Out the Brain Scanners

Carmine thought morning break was _never _going to come.

The minutes ticked by on the face of the huge silver-and-black clock that hung over the bay windows at the end of Carmine's salon, the shiny hands glinting each time they moved forward a second. Absentmindedly, her mind not really on her work, Carmine took the hot curling iron from the countertop, burning her hand as she touched the wrong end.

"Yeeouch!" she cried, nearly dropping the iron onto her customer's freshly dyed hair- dyed in Herbal Henna RejuveHair in Mahogany ™. She'd found the bottle on her countertop when she'd come into work that morning.

"I didn't put it there!" Marie had said, shrugging when Carmine had questioned her about it.

"Be careful!" hissed Carmine's customer as Carmine picked up the iron gingerly.

Finally, all the hair had been curled, a somewhat leonine effect, and Carmine was finally free for a precious forty-five minutes.

She'd come prepared today. Armed with a torch and a pair of comfortable trainers, Carmine rode the elevator down into the dark, cool recesses of the basement.

The elevator doors slid open, and Carmine once again stood there in the concrete tunnel, far underground. Down here in the basement it was almost like a different world, such a culture shock from the slick, polished surfaces of the building above.

Carmine switched on her torch, shining the beam around the passageway as she padded quickly down it and descended to the Dungeon. Walking past the telephone where she'd threatened to call security on that spy the day before- her cheeks warmed at the memory- she was finally standing in front of the doors.

One was slightly open.

Carmine frowned and shone her beam at the door. Definitely open.

_Was someone down here?_

She ignored the shiver that went through her at the thought and tugged the door open wider, slipping once again into the strangeness of the day before.

She pushed through the hanging tarps, and into that bizzare muggy heat of the passage beyond. Her heart leaping with excitement, Carmine pressed onwards as she came to the room with the tanks...

_...No. Bloody. Way._

It was _him!_

"What the _bloody _hell are you doing down here again?!" Carmine yelled at the pinstriped back of the fellow from yesterday. He was on a stepladder, obviously getting at the stuff in the tank. He turned around, looking not at all surprised to see her standing there.

"It's you! _Hello-o_!" he said. Carmine noticed he was carrying an enormous slotted spoon, full of greenish goo from the tank. "Have you seen this? It's _fascinating. _Even in this dormant state it still gives off regenerative emissions." He poked it, and it wobbled like gelatin. "Isn't it lovely?"

"I cannot believe you," said Carmine. "I knew it. I just _knew it. _I had you pegged from the moment I saw you. You just scream _spy."_

"I do?"

"Oh, come on!" Carmine said, crossing her arms. "The _pinstripes! _ The HAIR! You have taken the classic spy-approach of looking as distinctive as possible in order to escape detection."

"I wasn't 'zactly aware there was such an approach," said the man. He shrugged. "Oh well! I stand very much corrected!"

"Put down that serum," Carmine said.

"It's not serum..." said the man.

"_You're just stealing it for BeautyTech!"_

"_I am not from BeautyTech!!!" _said the man. His eyes grew rounder and more bulgy as he got more and more incensed.

They stood there, glaring at each other for several seconds.

"Fine," Carmine said. "Then where, may I ask, are you from?"

"A _long _way away," said the man. He produced a glass vial from the depths of his jacket and carefully tipped the stuff in the spoon in. Corking that, he stowed it away.

"Where? Like Russia?"

"Metaphorically yes," he said. "Physically, no."

"Then _explain_!" Carmine roared.

Suddenly, Carmine started to feel very strange indeed, as though she were getting lighter and lighter. She looked down at herself to see she was emitting a sort of greenish glow, growing stronger and stronger as she felt stranger and stranger.

"No! No! NO! " the man was saying, and Carmine looked up to see he was starting to glow too.

"What the _hell _is happening?!" Carmine said, trying to take a step forward, but it was as if she was glued to the spot.

"Just..." said the man, but suddenly Carmine's vision flooded with white, and she was gone.

Carmine suddenly came to in a flash of white, and immediately collapsed forwards onto the young man's outstretched arms. He set her upright, as though he caught falling girls on a regular basis. Carmine just stood there, her eyes closed, as she waited for her waves of dizziness to subside.

"Alright?" she heard a voice ask her.

"What does it look like?" she snarled, breaking away and stumbling against something soft and a bit squishy. It felt like padded fabric. Was she in the loony bin? _ I hope not. I've heard the food is awful..._

She opened her eyes to see the young fellow staring at her. He produced the strange torch she'd seen him use the previous day and shine it into each of her eyes.

"You'll live," he said. "Up we get!"

Carmine stood up straight, looking at her surroundings. She seemed to be in a small circular room, the walls of the room soft and giving, translucent almost, and ribbed with veins and strange bony structures. It looked like she was inside some kind of huge organ.

"You're not a spy, are you?" she asked.

"Not currently," he said.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," said the man.

"Doctor...who?" asked Carmine suspiciously.

"Just…the Doctor," he said, now examining the fleshy walls of the room they were in.

"Your name is 'Doctor'?" asked Carmine, still suspicious.

"_The_ Doctor," said the man. "The _the_ is crucial."

"No-one's name is 'the Doctor'," said Carmine. "That's _mental."_

"Mine is," said the Doctor.

"So your mummy just up and named you 'The Doctor?'"

"You're a very suspicious sort of girl, aren't you?" said the Doctor.

"Better suspicious than dead," said Carmine darkly. "I'm Carmine Harper."

"I know," said the Doctor.

"What, are you psychic?"

"No, it's printed on your badge," said the Doctor. Carmine fingered her name-badge, pinned to her fashionable Empire uniform.

The Doctor found a fold in the walls, a long crease running from the harder, bony floor to the ceiling. Stroking the fold, it gave a strange ripple and opened, like a huge sideways eyelid.

Carmine gave a strange little sound, halfway between a yell and a _eucch._

"You stay _here_," said the Doctor. "Don't touch, manhandle, mangle, or break _anything. _This ship's very delicate and..."

"_Ship?!"_ said Carmine. "Hold on. HOLD ON. I've been abducted by aliens, haven't I? You're not denying it! What, are you going to stick me with a probe now? Hmm? Come on!" She was yelling by now, and stomped her foot hard on the fleshy floor. "Wheel out the brain scanners!!"

"FINE!" said the Doctor. "You can come! Just quit _yelling!_ You'll upset the ship!"

"What if I don't _want _to come?" asked Carmine, choosing to ignore the slightly cryptic comment about upsetting the ship.

"Then you can stay here," said the Doctor. He turned on the heels of his trainers and disappeared, presumably down a corridor.

"Wait!" said Carmine, following him out of the small chamber. Looking back at it, with its weird retracted fleshy door, she wondered exactly what she had just gotten into.

The corridor that stretched out before them literally pulsed with life. Webs of veins stretched behind the weird translucent walls, which arched up to a ceiling that was ridged and lumpy, almost like an enormous spine. Occasionally, gill-slits would flare in the fleshy walls, their delicate shell-pink interiors giving a muffled roar as they sucked in air.

"What kind of ship _is _this, anyway?" asked Carmine, peering into the depths of one of these gills as it breathed warm air onto her.

"I do suppose 'ship' is the wrong noun to use," said the Doctor. "We're standing in an 'engineered space-travelling host life-form'. That's a huge animal that travels through space with passengers."

"I know what that _means_," said Carmine. "I'm not an idiot. So it's like a bioship? Like on that one episode of Star Trek?"

"Bingo!" said the Doctor. "That's why it's so hot down there in London. This ship's just generating tons of heat. Tons and tons, and where's it going to go but in the atmosphere around us? Beachtime for Londoners! We're just little parasites, clinging on for the ride. Unlike the owners of this ship, who ungraciously just beamed us up- really, it was supposed to be just _me, _but you were caught in the spotlight, so to speak, and zoop! Up you came."

But Carmine wasn't really listening. They had come to a section of the wall that was transparent, a huge bay window of sorts, but soft, more like a membrane. Outside of this window was London.

Carmine stood high above the city she had been born in, standing over the buildings- _over _them, floating high above the glittering spires of the city, miles above the surface of the Thames. So far below, she could see the cars, smaller than beetles, winding their way through the streets of the city. On the horizon, she could see the stormfront that loomed in the north, and beyond that was the sky, stretching onwards to infinity.

"It's London," she whispered, reaching out her hands to touch the warm membrane. She felt strange and jittery, electric, as if she were hooked up to a jumper cable.

"It is," said the Doctor, quietly.

"How can they not see us?" she asked, her voice still hushed.

"It's called a Hades cloak," said the Doctor. "Phases the ship slightly out of this dimension- just slightly, mind, or else everything would be stranger than it already is. Makes us right near undetectable. Not even Torchwood scanners could pick up on us now, even if they weren't, you know, not there."

"Aliens," said Carmine. "I'd always thought it was a bit of a hoax, personally, but..."

She turned to the Doctor. "I believe you, even if you are a bit mad."

The Doctor gave her an enormous, toothy grin. "We're being expected. Allons-y!"

They had reached the end of the corridor, coming to another strange fleshy door. "Hold on, lemme try this one," Carmine said, reaching up and stroking the door.

It once again rippled and retracted into the walls.

"_Wicked,_" Carmine said.

"_Sak-aarthi Ruki Na-arn!" _screeched the enormous creature standing in the middle of the room. "_Kili Rikili asnaati shoth HI-UUUU-MAN!_"

The creature was huge- standing seven or eight feet tall, its size increased by its muscular tail and by the grey armour plating that covered its body. In shape it was somewhat like a raptor-dinosaur, a deinonycus or some such, only it had a longer neck and no mouth. Instead, a long glistening black tongue emerged from an orifice on the tip of the creature's snout. This flickered in and out as it examined the Doctor and Carmine with its round acid-green eyes.

It seemed to be hooked up to some kind of strange pulsating slimy organ, a large sac of faintly glowing liquid swelling from one wall in the room. Attached to various points on the armoured creature's body were long ropy white cords, like nerves, leading from it to the sac. Now it was ripping off these cords, making a strange hissing from the gill slits that fluttered along its neck.

"Anaasi Rook!" said the Doctor, and the creature stopped. "Human sanath! Ruki te ratakeer skiuuuth."

"What...exactly is that?" said Carmine.

"Oh dear, I've forgotten my manners," said the Doctor. "Carmine, please say 'hello' to Aanki-Ribathi the eighth of the Esteemed planet Kix."

"It's a space-anteater!" said Carmine faintly.

Aanki-Ribathi the Eighth muttered something unintelligible.

"My…err…primate friend here is a little bemused by the awesome power of your engineered space-travelling host life-form," said the Doctor, giving a weird twirling gesture of his hand like Carmine had seen performed in fruity Medieval plays. "Don't mind her."

Suddenly, an eyelid-door opened in the opposite wall and another creature stomped through, on all fours this time. It reared up and snorted, its long daggerlike claws scraping against each other as it flexed its toes.

"_What isssss the meaning of thisssss, Doctor-one?" _hissed Alien Number Two.

"And _here_ she is!" said the Doctor, "Matriarch-Mother Hissk-Ribathi! Oh, Carmine, do say hello to this one- Kixhallablorkath Mother-Matriarchs are very touchy."

The aliens- Kixhallablorkaths, whatever- were staring at her, zero expression in their eyes.

Carmine cleared her throat and stepped forward, a little wobbly on the spongy floor. "Hi," she said. "I..." she tapped her chest- "Me, I am Carmine Harper, er, Human, of, like, Earth."

She turned to the Doctor. "Was that ok?"

He gave her a thumbs-up.

"What isss the statussss, Doctor-one?" hissed Hissk-Ribathi. "What isss the statussss of our eggsss?"

"Peachy, my dear Hissk," said the Doctor, stepping forward and plugging one of the nervelike tendrils into his arm. Immediately, a round fleshy eyelid opened in the wall, exposing a huge lens. A beam of strange filmy light suddenly shot out of it, a holographic map of the Empire of Beauty beaming into existence in the middle of the room.

"It was right where the ship thought it was," said the Doctor, pointing to the basement of the steadily glowing translucent Empire. There, a small green light pulsed, right where Carmine figured the tank of stuff was.

"Hold on _just _a tick," she said, stepping forwards to stare at the light. "You mean...that tank of stuff...in the dungeon..."

She turned to stare at the spiny face of Hissk...or maybe it was Aanki. _They looked identical._ "That's your..._eggs_?"

"Our eggs," hissed Hissk. "Long, long ago, many of your sekk-fly lifespans, Carmine-one, we and our host-ship were passing through this cluster of planets...and we were _attacked_."

She gave an angry snort, gill slits flaring.

"That enemy of all Kix-kind, that terrible beast of flux, the Ruska Taarn!" snarled Hissk. "We are shamed to even share a planet-cluster with its kind."

Aanki gave a low, dangerous growl.

"We battled in darkest space with the Ruska Taarn, and our host-ship was injured," said Hissk, her voice taking on a low, lachrymose note. "We were forced to jettison our eggs, enclosed safely in their shuttlepod, onto Earth's surface. Now we come to take them back to Kix to hatch."

"So...that's your _children _down there in the basement of my job?" said Carmine incredulously. "I thought they were a new spa product!"

"You were mistaken," sniffed Hissk.

"How'd they stay alive so long iffing it was hundreds and hundreds of years since they crashed here?" asked Carmine.

"We live long lives," said Hissk. "Our eggs have a...a..."

"A sort of defence mechanism," supplied the Doctor.

"The cells of the eggs may repair themselves. They do not die," said Hissk. "An idea you must recognize, Doctor-one."

"Speaking of me," interjected the Doctor, "I'm the bloke who's helping this scaly lot rescue the eggs. So, all's well in Eggland!" said the Doctor, clapping his hands and rubbing them together.

"So what do we do now, just beam 'em up?" asked Carmine.

"Unfortunately, no," said the Doctor. "Now, this is all fine and fiddly, but there seems to be a damper field of some kind over the room, so we'll just have to try it the old-fashioned way."

"Explain, Doctor-one," Hissk said.

"We pop down there with the teleport, nab the eggs and pop back up here!" said the Doctor, explaining all this with great waving-of-arms.

"WELL, let's just pop-pop-pop away, then!" said Carmine.


	4. Strange Alien Phenomena

Carmine, the Doctor, and the two Kixhallablorkaths appeared in the tank-room in great flashes of greenish light. Carmine reeled in the sudden wave of dizziness that washed over her, and she staggered against the wall of the room.

"Alright?" asked the Doctor concernedly.

"I get ill on the Millennium Wheel," Carmine said, fixing her fringe back into place. "Don't mind me."

Suddenly, there was an ear-shattering roar of fury from the kixhallablorkaths, making Carmine jump about four feet in the air.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?!" screeched Hissk as Aanki erupted in great bouts of Kix-speak. "DOCTOR-ONE! You said they were _whole!_"

"They _are_ whole!" said the Doctor, pushing past the armoured sides of the Kixhallablorkaths. The mass of egg-stuff sat there in the tank. "Look at it! Perfectly OK!"

"You promised us you would find our eggs!" roared Hissk. "They are half-gone! _Half-GONE!_ Our children are DEAD!"

"I really did think they looked a bit off," said Carmine.

"What have you done to them?" wailed Hissk. She pressed her taloned hand to the glass of the tank, as if trying to touch the eggs floating inside.

Carmine flinched. Hissk screeched.

"You _promised,_" said Hissk. She started towards the Doctor and Carmine, talons twitching worryingly in front of her. "_You promised!_"

With a terrible wail, Hissk slashed down at the Doctor and Carmine- and met only empty space.

"Come _on, _you useless thing!" said Carmine, hauling the Doctor by the arm as she ran down the dungeon hallway. Her feet weren't aching at all- thank God for tennis shoes. "We're going to get ourselves killed, and it's your bloody fault!"

"How is it _my _fault?" protested the Doctor. "I couldn't have possibly known about the eggs- I haven't been around enough Kixhallablorkath eggs to know the difference between live and half-rotted ones, and besides from that region of the universe I've heard that it's very hard to tell between live and half-rotted ones anyways..."

"How do you know about all this stuff?!" asked Carmine as they ran up the stairs to the basement. "Is there some sort of Wikipedia for Strange Alien Phenomena that I just haven't heard about yet?"

"Regrettably, no," said the Doctor, "Though that would be brilliant! Mostly my vast knowledge of 'strange alien phenomena'- great word, phenomena, like hootenanny and sesquipedalian- comes from direct experience. Field observations. That jazz."

"So you're some sort of…strange alien phenomena investigator?" asked Carmine, puffing as they topped the stairs. The Doctor slammed the heavy door shut behind Carmine, whipped out the little buzzing blue torch, and shone it on the door handle.

"Well, _that's_ going to do a _world _of good, shining torches on door handles!" said Carmine as the Doctor tucked the torch back into his stripy suit. "What, aside from being the alien phenomena expert, you've also found a way to lock doors with torches?!"

"It's not a torch," said the Doctor, taking it back out again and showing the little silvery thing to Carmine. "It's a sonic screwdriver."

"A_ what_?"

"A sonic screwdriver," said the Doctor.

"_Really?_" asked Carmine.

"Yeah!" said the Doctor.

"_Wicked!"_

BOOM! Something hit the door with immense force, and Carmine and the Doctor leaped sideways away from it.

"Kixhallablorkath alert!" yelled the Doctor as the aliens slammed into the door again, and this time the thick steel of the doors started to buckle.

"Come _on_!" said Carmine. "Do you really want to be sliced to bits or eaten or whatever it is those creatures are planning to do to us when they catch us?!"

They made a run for the elevator, and reached it just as the Kixhallablorkaths burst through the doors. One of the doors snapped off its hinges and jagged bits of metal went flying everywhere. One of the bits impaled itself in the closing doors of the elevator.

"Oh, my," said Carmine faintly, staring at it.

"Come on, come on, come on!!!" the Doctor was saying, stabbing elevator buttons with his long pale fingers. Aanki and Hissk had freed themselves from the ruins of the door and were thundering up the hallway, swinging their great scaly tails around. Carmine, standing in the elevator, felt rather as if she were being charged at by two rhinoceroses- the general splatter effect would be the same if the Kixhallablorkaths ran into them.

"Doc-tooooooor!" said Carmine, smacking the Doctor on his pinstriped shoulder.

"A-ha!" said the Doctor, pressing the large button to send them up to the first floor. The elevator doors juddered, then began to slide closed, painfully slowly.

"Betrayerrrrrr!" wailed Hissk as the doors finally snapped closed. A loud metallic BANG and a large dent suddenly appeared on the inside of the doors, and then the elevator started to move upwards.

Carmine let out a lot of pent-up breath and slid to the bottom of the elevator.

"Alright?" asked the Doctor.

"Never better," snapped Carmine.

"It doesn't sound like you're alright," observed the Doctor. "Actually, it sounds like you're very much not-alright."

"Who _are _you?" asked Carmine, watching the Doctor as he sat cross-legged on the floor next to her. "I mean, seriously. I see you in the basement yesterday in my boring old hair-techie's life, and the next thing I know, everything is absolutely mental and there's space-anteaters…"

"Kixhallablorkaths," said the Doctor.

"Yes, thank you!" said Carmine. "Anyways, there's space-anteaters trying to kill me and weird meat spaceships-"

"Engineered space travelling host life-form," said the Doctor.

"Sorry!" said Carmine. "Engineered space travelling host life-forms and strange tanks of eggs in the basement and…and…"

She turned to the Doctor. "What _are _those eggs doing in the basement anyway? Not a normal fixture for beauty salons, do you think?"

There was a pleasant little ding as the elevator reached the first floor, and the Doctor leapt to his feet. _Literally leapt, _thought Carmine. _Everything about him was leaping, or jumping, or bouncing, or babbling, or running._  
"I don't think," said the Doctor as they left the elevator, going into the crowded first floor. He nearly walked right into someone Carmine thought she might have seen on the telly at some point, and gave him a nasty look. "Really, those eggs got me thinking."

"I sense a monologue," said Carmine.

"I like to get thinking. Here I am, getting thinking," said the Doctor. "It all started when the Kixhallablorkaths talked about the defense mechanism for their eggs."

"The regenerative cells?" said Carmine. "What about them?"

"_Well,_ the cells regenerate even if they're taken out of the egg. That's the whole point- they don't really die, they just regenerate themselves," said the Doctor, "And they're in a beauty salon."

"Right," said Carmine, not getting it.

"A _beauty _salon," said the Doctor. "What is it you humans have been trying to achieve since cosmetics were invented? What's the entire point of slathering chemical substances all over your face?"

"Trying to look better?" said Carmine. "Trying to look…younger?"

And then it hit her. "Oh, my God," she said, her mouth hanging open like a fish's. "They're putting the eggs…they're putting the alien eggs which heal themselves, regenerate themselves…they're putting it into the _beauty products!!!_"

Carmine stood there in stunned silence. "I am _never ever _using the Empire lipstick again."


End file.
